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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28104501">The Civil Wars</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/jpsjpsjpsJUPES/pseuds/jpsjpsjpsJUPES'>jpsjpsjpsJUPES</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Baby’s First Anthology, Canon-typical dream violence, Canon-typical language, Declan has powers but he doesn't display them in this, Gen, I use the words “dreamthings” and “dreamthink” intensely liberally, Lots of black market dealings, Please be gentle, Post-TRC but pre-CDTH, Ronan is a bad younger brother, this was a test for transitional writing without line breaks</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 21:54:30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,441</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28104501</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/jpsjpsjpsJUPES/pseuds/jpsjpsjpsJUPES</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“I’m an adult,” Declan says, and it’s a pointed <i>and you’re not,</i> “It always feels like we’re running out of time.” Ronan knows that feeling, but he’s not going to agree with him about it, he’s going to look out the window and pretend his answer didn’t exist at all. It’s like that, with them, where nothing matters. Declan can say the world is ending and Ronan wouldn’t care, he wouldn’t care, because Declan doesn’t know the difference between worlds and stories like Ronan does.</p><p>The white-black Nissan never stalls, it never buzzes when it’s not supposed to, and the horn sounds like someone’s whispering in your ear. It feels like it’s where the world will end, just by virtue of being where you <i>don’t</i> want to be when it would.</p><p>“Do you think you have an infinite amount of time?” Declan asks, and it sets a fire in Ronan’s feet, in his fingertips, and it’s the kind of fury that comes with being a Lynch. Lynch like wind feeding flame, sky feeding monsters. “Unlike all the rest of us, <i>you</i> do?”</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Declan Lynch &amp; Ronan Lynch</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Civil Wars</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Title is from a 9-minute film called <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yN9VH_4GSQ">A Modest Defeat</a> directed by David Barr. Headcanons included—Declan’s volvo has been edited to an old school Nissan 300zx as courtesy of my boyfriend’s opinion. This fic couldn’t have happened without his influence, (I love you, Wes!) I’m incredibly grateful for what he’s done to help me with making up my headcanons and such for both D.C. and Ronan both. :) I hope you enjoy this!</p><p>PS. This is post TRC, but pre-CDTH. Some things may be inaccurate and/or spoilery.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The dream feels hollow.</p><p>Ronan’s feet fall like thunderstorms on the dewy grass. It feels like he’s walking on the edge of something elegant, on the brink of dreams and memory. Ronan’s walking somewhere, but the images in his peripheral only share fleeting colors, the dull browns and bricks of the Barns, and the blue-white of Aglionby. It feels about as familiar as dreams usually can.</p><p>The cicadas blend in with static and the way Dad’s beamer sounds when it revs in slimy mud—Ronan’s breath curls and heats the air around him. The grass curls around his ankles when he leans, but sharply recoils when he lifts his foot. It’s afraid of being burned; there’s something Ronan is missing about the familiarity. </p><p>When he’d been little, just edging over the double-digits of tweenhood, Ronan had seen the more awful parts of keeping livestock. He’d witnessed, by accident, the hook and the beef, the almost playdough like texture of the hung animal. It hadn’t any head, or limbs, and it hadn’t mooed. What was left of the animal belonged in the kitchen, to freeze and thaw, ebbing and flowing. It’d been like a candle wax, burning.</p><p>He smells the color amalgamation before he sees it, the way it crawls from the ground and etches itself into a wall that can’t reach the ceiling. The sky is infinitely far away, but it tries, burning and waxing. It tries, and while it does, the static grows. It fills Ronan’s ears, like blood, and he can hear the way the metal hung deep and hollow.</p><p>There’s no metal here, but there’s something else, different. Ronan’s dreams have always been incredibly <em> other</em>. There’s been very little of Ronan in them, but so much fear, a space that’s running out of room. At some point, his dream things are going to walk right out of the space in his head. At some point, he’s going to have to realize they already have.</p><p>The color amalgamation is familiar—it’s got the beaks and eyes and marbles that justify Niall’s glory, stories upon stories of the Lynch boys’ names in fluctuating tones. He can see where he’s dreamt fear into it, the tortuous feeling of <em> being </em> that other inside a school destined for wealth and designed for fame, the dull ache of modest defeats. He can tell it’s cold, and that chill comes from the hooks that he’s hung from himself.</p><p>Night terrors are seldom <em> cold</em>, but Ronan avoids touching them, usually.</p><p>The thing, the dream <em> thing </em>—neither creature nor coherent thought, just Ronan’s dreaming making one out of all—drips onto the grass. It builds upon itself like wet sand, and Ronan reaches his hand forward.</p><p>He catches it where it drips, but it latches onto his hand, his arm, and it sinks low to his skin. It burns, but it burns in a <em> cold </em> way—it burns like how ice feels when you bite into it, and he recoils back, but the drip follows. It reaches for him, curdling his skin and setting off goosebumps like fireworks. He reaches back, stumbling further, and he can feel the blood underneath his fingernails, the heavy burdened feeling of wet sand, of drying candle.</p><p>He’d never known dream things could <em> bleed </em> before he’d seen Dad butcher that cow.</p><p>It’d been the second most awful experience of his life.</p><p>When he tries to peel off the drying, searing cold feeling, he thinks the dream is saying—</p><p>“You always act like you’re running out of time.”</p><p>Declan’s Nissan is as profusely boring as he is, and the way he’s driving it now—one hand on a three-fourths empty coffee cop and one hand on the wheel, knees pointed opposite—feels like the most reckless thing he’s done in three weeks. Driving in one hand isn’t the <em> Declan Way</em>, because Declan never does anything that anyone else does. Other people get attention. Declan Lynch gets antacids.</p><p>Declan blinks, but doesn’t respond at first. He rolls his words around with his tongue and decides it’s too much work to think of a good response for Ronan; he’s always like that, Declan is, deciding that Ronan isn’t enough to get worked up over. It’s the kind of thing that gets under his skin, being decided he’s not worth fighting against, fighting with. </p><p>“I’m an adult,” Declan says, and it’s a pointed <em> and you’re not</em>, “It always feels like we’re running out of time.” Ronan knows that feeling, but he’s not going to agree with him about it, he’s going to look out the window and pretend his answer didn’t exist at all. It’s like that, with them, where nothing matters. Declan can say the world is ending and Ronan wouldn’t care, he wouldn’t care, because Declan doesn’t know the difference between worlds and stories like Ronan does.</p><p>The white-black Nissan never stalls, it never buzzes when it’s not supposed to, and the horn sounds like someone’s whispering in your ear. It feels like it’s where the world will end, just by virtue of being where you <em> don’t </em> want to be when it would.</p><p>“Do you think you have an infinite amount of time?” Declan asks, and it sets a fire in Ronan’s feet, in his fingertips, and it’s the kind of fury that comes with being a Lynch. <em> Lynch </em> like <em> wind feeding flame</em>, <em> sky feeding monsters</em>. “Unlike all the rest of us, <em> you </em>do?”</p><p>“More time than you,” Ronan says.</p><p>“Jesus, Ronan,” Declan says. “Do you have to spend all your time being vile?” He says <em>vile</em> like <em>I shouldn’t have expected any more from you</em>. He says <em>Ronan</em> like <em>Unfortunately for me,</em> <em>I did</em>.</p><p>Ronan’s smile is seething when he replies, “It’s the only thing I’m good at,” and it hurts a little true when he says it. Declan frowns something awful, and Ronan knows he did something that’s to be proud of when nothing is said for a long time.</p><p>It’s not brother uncomfortable, but it’s Lynch uncomfortable, it’s the dewy silence that comes after a thunderstorm. He scrapes his nails against the window and leaves warm, blurry fingerprints, he proves etched on hands and tattoos from the heat of his skin. Declan bristles beside him. He always does.</p><p>He almost does it, now, to get a rise out of him. It’s just so easy. Declan is so easy to bother. It comes with being boring, he’d think.</p><p>“If you have to be an asshole,” Declan says, “don’t mess up the Nissan.”</p><p>Declan’s Nissan is <em> screaming</em>.</p><p>The sound of the chase buries itself deep inside the rural nothingness of Henrietta, West Virginia. There’s a thick, screaming wail coming from its tires as it barely moves around the trees and the fields of nowhere and nothing, following after a creature that hides from its headlights. From inside the car, Ronan hurtles himself against the locked car door, locked and loaded and <em> venomous </em> at the sight of his night terror.</p><p>By his side, Declan’s gritting his teeth against his gums black and purple, and he looks about ready to be sick. The Nissan leaps across each ditch back onto the road, its tires snarling hard and painful when they make contact with the asphalt. The creature hunches and drools and <em> bounds </em> from its pursuer, and for once, there’s not an inch of Lynch fear among them.</p><p>“You need to get <em> closer</em>,” Ronan urges, his voice strained. There’s sweat staining his arms and it glistens across the moonlight. There’s bug bites that swarm over the bumps of bug bites and moles on scarred, moonlit skin. The Nissan fishtails against the edges of the smoothed asphalt road where there’s no light but its own headlights for miles, and the sides of the road go straight into ditches.</p><p>“I’m not going to <em> crash </em> either, Ronan,” Declan says, and it’s an octave from a hiss. He’s correcting every wide-edged turn with turning the wheel the complete opposite way, the Nissan <em>bumpity-bumpiting</em> to follow his directions. The night terror in front of them turns around to face the car, and they both can see it: the object of Ronan’s terror, the gold-red crown that pierces through its mouth and ends on the other side of its teeth.</p><p>It curls around like a tusk, or rope from its head down to the bottom of its jaw. And while the creature itself is jet-black, the ooze it bleeds is blood <em> red.</em> When Declan turns to Ronan, he’s sweating, a faint and pained curse trapped in his mouth. The Nissan idles in the center of the road, its underbelly swearing against the asphalt and its own burning rubber.</p><p>“It’s still.” Declan says. “Maybe it’s blind?”</p><p>“No,” Ronan says, and it’s incredibly, appallingly certain. “It sees me.”</p><p>The creature snaps its fangs, and the Nissan howls; Declan’s foot on the clutch sends it as he ups the gears, gassing the pedal as soon as he’s able to get some ounce of control. The Nissan’s tires are hotwires against the asphalt, and its front bumper slams against the creature. The car goes <em> bumpity-bumpity </em> and Declan doesn’t let go of it.</p><p>Ronan’s arms bruise against the passenger door, and unbeknownst to both of them, it bruises. “Holy shit,” Ronan says as Declan gasses the Nissan again, sending the car in a high speed reversal, making the car shaky and shocking to every bone and muscle that they are complicit in running over. “Jesus Mary Fuckin’ Shit,” Ronan praises, thrilled and sickened. “Holy <em> shit </em>! Declan. D.C.!”</p><p>“I don’t want to hear it,” Declan says, and his forearms down to his fingertips tremble. Ronan slaps him on the bicep once, and then stumbles out of the car with one leg partially numb and one arm partially bruised. </p><p>“D.C., it got its shit in. Its tusk is in its—oh, <em> haha.” </em></p><p>“Don’t tell me,” Declan says, just as Ronan explains, “It’s got tusk dick.”</p><p>“No, I—thank you, Ronan,” Declan says. “Are we done? Can we—oh God,” it’s a strained, agonized sound, and he wipes his face down with shaking, sweating hands. The entire Nissan burns overheated and swearing beneath his feet. “We have to wrap it, don’t we? Jesus, Ronan.” In comparison, Declan says <em> God </em> like <em> forgive me </em> and says <em> Jesus </em> like <em> you’ve personally made my life miserable</em>.</p><p>“You’re the one who ran it over,” Ronan says, but he’s thrilled beyond measure. There’s a shiver of a scowl beneath his words when he has to face the night terror in all of its bloody, tusky, oozing glory. “Where’s the tarp? Backseat?”</p><p>“Trunk,” Declan offers, opening the trunk with a satisfying, dull <em> click</em>. And with trembling, jello legs, he walks out, avoiding looking at the night terror, and instead gingerly easing the trunk open. “There it is. Tarp. Wrap it <em> well</em>, please. Wrap it securely.”</p><p>“Ronan Motherfuckin’ Lynch on the job, <em> don’t </em> freak it.” </p><p>“I’m not <em> freaking </em> it.” Declan says. His hands haven’t stopped shaking for minutes, and he wrings them out with the practiced art of a very bland Lynch.</p><p>“You’re fucking freaking it, man. Don’t.”</p><p>Declan is, in fact, freaking it. There’s a sweaty sheen to his fingertips from the dark, aching wringing that he’s subjecting his hands to. In comparison, Ronan’s a lightning kind of calm, burning smoothly. He draws out the tarp and wraps the dreamthing inside of it. The tarp is blue, opaque, and heavy. It is as soothing as any tarp could be, for the pure satisfaction of not being able to see inside of it. Ronan seems to know this all well and good, and he uses the limited resource as carefully as Ronan Lynch does <em> careful </em> any time else.</p><p>Declan watches Ronan’s hands carefully. Carefully, twice over, once for both of them. Ronan watches him back once he notices him staring, and they’re at an impasse.</p><p>“Shouldn’t this be blasphemy?” Ronan asks.</p><p>The entire house here is velvety purple color, with long, fraying curtains over the windows. </p><p>The business of dreamthings calls for the interest of interesting places—Declan and Ronan sit at a table that’s got a patterned purple tablecloth and wobbles periodically. Ronan spends all of his weight balancing it, arms sprawled across either end of it as Declan watches. <em> He </em>sits back and crosses his legs, professional and sharklike. </p><p><em> Lynch </em> is sharklike.</p><p>“No,” Declan says, as if he’s had this conversation a thousand times. He well could have, by now, the fact that everything seems to have happened a thousand times, always. The thing with time—it’s a circle, an ocean, but not linear. Declan’s a very linear person, a very concrete thinker. Ronan thinks about dreams. “Blasphemy—things like that aren’t well understood. Blasphemy is loose. Don’t call this blasphemy.”</p><p>“A sore topic,” Ronan says. Their clairvoyant, as she enters, is an older woman. Her skin’s prickly and wrinkled by age, deathly white and makeup that’s so thick <em> it’s </em> blushing. She walks in and <em> feels </em> the room, whisking her hands past incense smoke trails and the for-show amethyst gemstones. Everything here is purple and black and smoking, and Ronan feels like he’s suffocating hilariously slowly.</p><p>Ronan’s met <em> real </em> clairvoyants, unlike her. He can pinpoint the wet spots of old money cologne she’s pampered on her wrists as fast as she can pinpoint what she’ll say about him. Something about <em> a lost sense of identity</em>, maybe. <em> A haunting sensation of death that lingers</em>. Ronan is as much a corpse as his father was, butchered and head screwed shut with a crow bar for a key. </p><p>Declan—<em> rich</em>, she might say. <em> Old money. Daddy’s least favorite. </em> It radiates from his chest, the lack of affection in the Lynch household. She might say— <em> a shark in blood infested waters,</em> and Ronan will laugh at her. Declan’s got as much <em> shark </em> as he’s got <em> Lynch </em>—he uses that name like a wax seal for a torn letter, worthless, even for show.</p><p>She sits in front of them, her long, translucent robe pooling at her feet. Her fingers are pointed and long, and she grabs the skin of Ronan’s forearms to pull him back to an upright position. He slinks back with a deliberate purpose, watching her and Declan watching him—there’s a triangular position of wariness in the room, filling it to a brink.</p><p>“Who’s going first?” She asks, and the clicking, wetness of her mouth makes Ronan recoil closer to his hung suit jacket. Declan watches every bit of his mannerisms, clouded by smoke and shadowed by darkness. Her fingers drum noiselessly against the tablecloth.</p><p>“Not me,” Ronan says, and her expression is bored and dreadful. Declan shifts, but her attention doesn’t snap to him. There’s a coolness about her, simmered by expectations of what they’re meant to be like. Brothers. Sharks. Butch<em> er </em> and butch <em> ered</em>.</p><p>“That’s not what we’re here for.” Declan says, and her attention drifts. Declan says <em> that’s not </em> like <em> I have to act quickly</em>, and <em> we’re </em> like <em> there’s nothing left to stall for.</em> Ronan looks at him like <em> you’re an idiot.</em> There is a second of deliberate stillness between them, where Declan’s said his peace, and there’s still no resolution. “If I have to—me. Then.”</p><p>“You,” she says. <em> You</em>, she says, and Ronan bites something putrid back. “Are full of things.” Declan’s staring. “Dreams. Shame. You’re so knotted up and wounded. You—this is <em> belief</em>, not <em> blasphemy </em>—” and she looks at Ronan, and Ronan grins back, knowing and grotesque, “Had nothing before you were ruined. Wounded. Isn’t that so?”</p><p>Declan doesn’t want to answer this—it’s humiliating. And he’s stuck in the purple grays and the smoke and the claustrophobia he gets from being known. She continues, “You know it to be.”</p><p>“That’s not the whole story.” Declan says, and it means <em> yes. Yes. Yes. And it aches stil l. </em></p><p>“Clairvoyance isn’t a whole story, it’s a shitty little ‘gist.’ That’s the <em> gist</em>.” </p><p>“And you,” she says, her curled and long fingers pointed to Ronan, then, in a second. “The hurter. You hurt because you avoid hurting. What are you waiting to happen?”</p><p>“The hurter,” he repeats. “That’s a shitty title, lady.”</p><p>“You’re waiting to be butchered, like a cow,” she says, and Ronan’s jaw locks. “But there’s no crown at the end of that tunnel, <em> boy</em>. You’re waiting for something that doesn’t exist. Metal hooks don’t make metal crowns.</p><p>Ronan bristles, a painful little move where the tips of his shoulders shiver and he can feel it down his spine, vertebrae by vertebrae. “That’s a fucking awful gist.”</p><p>“Gists never have to be <em> good</em>, boy,” she says, and she smells and it’s hot in this room and Ronan is finally <em> suffocating</em>. Declan leans forward, but she doesn’t stop there, ignoring Declan as easily as Niall had. “But you? You know that there’s dreams that are full of shame, just like your brother. For him—very similar, those things. For <em> you</em>? All the same, they will always be the same.”</p><p>“Dreams aren’t shameful,” Ronan says, but it’s as poisonous as it is venomous.</p><p>“We came here for a business offer,” Declan says, and Ronan shrinks—saved by the bell.</p><p>“I’m not interested in business offers,” she says, and then: “I’m interested in <em> indulging in knowledge</em>.”</p><p>Ronan’s been a wealth of knowledge his whole life, and this interpretation of obsession with giving it makes him <em> ill</em>. Declan looks—flabbergasted, but undeterred. “That is not <em> not </em> what we’re discussing, ma’am,” he says, and it’s back to <em> Lynch, mister Lynch, mister impossible. </em> “I heard you’d be interested in a Pandora’s Box of sorts.”</p><p>She stops, then—dreamthings can be bought by <em> anyone </em> for <em> anything</em>. It doesn’t matter if that’s the Thing’s deliberate, original reason for existing or not. It can exist because it was told to, designed to, furnished and polished to. Dreamthings are made to be seen and exhibited—and besides, this isn’t one of Niall’s things. This is Ronan’s dreamthink—a Ronan thought to cover up for a well-sought after and destroyed Niall thought. If there’s enough chase for one thing, that one thing gets destroyed and remade several times over by Ronan. It’s a deal they have.</p><p>Ronan gets a connection to Niall and the satisfaction of destroying something of immense importance. Declan gets something to make everyone happy. This Pandora’s Box is an item she was meant to already be given, but the arrival never came to the dream market near her, so they’re improvising. Every new item has to be given personally—from Ronan’s head and from Declan’s hands. It’s something that has to be hand-crafted every time on the trip to each new destination.</p><p>“Of sorts,” she repeats. “I was meant to be given something like that sometime ago.”</p><p><em> Bingo</em>, Ronan thinks.</p><p>“There was a miscommunication involved in the transportation of some items, recently,” Declan says, and he’s instantly in his element—small, white lies for the greater good of survival “Including some replicas and fakes being added to the mix. We had to make sure everything was pristine and correct before transportation could happen again.”</p><p>“And there was no discussion of this to your clients,” she says, matter-of-factly. An insulting comment. “Because the <em> Lynch </em> wax-seal is made for secret-holders full of things, not just normal things or special things, but everything. Things that hurt.”</p><p>Declan doesn’t bristle at her words—a practiced, unperturbed stillness to his stature. “Sometimes. But are there ever truly worthwhile items that <em> don’t </em> hurt? You work in the business of clairvoyance. I’m sure you understand secrets and things as well as anyone, ma’am.”</p><p>“I may,” she says. “I don’t typically keep secrets from people who deserve to know them, even if it’s frightful.”</p><p>Declan’s smile is gentle. “Frightened clients don’t make for happy clients, do they? That’s a brave marketing choice, in the end.”</p><p>“Sometimes fear is a powerful proponent in keeping a business alive.”</p><p>Ronan dreams constantly of Niall.</p><p>He appears in masks that the trees of Lindenmere wears. When Ronan sleeps, he dreams about his father’s face, and his long slender fingers. He dreams about Niall’s nose and his blue, icy eyes, and the freckle that was right under his lower up, and he dreams about Niall placing his face on Ronan’s. He thinks about having to see the world through selfish, egotistic terms and having to swallow it every second.</p><p>When he figured Aurora was a dreamthing and not a <em> real </em> thing, he discovered narratives in his dreams where Niall crawled out of her chest like she’d just been a skin he’d been needing to shed for some time. She crumbles like wet tissue paper and he walks out of her skin and holds Ronan’s head with his fingertips. He still has his rings on. They brand Ronan’s jaw as he holds him. He tells Ronan, he says:</p><p>
  <em> There are more important things to want than intimacy. </em>
</p><p>Aurora was never excellent at intimacy. She told him every day: “I want what you want. I want you to be happy.” Her smile always was incredibly gentle, and her eyes were always soft, and even if Ronan screamed and cried and wanted things he shouldn’t have been given—like fire and chalk to write on the walls and bruised, bleeding knuckles just for the <em> thrill </em> of feeling alive—she’d tell him. <em> I want what you want. I want you to be happy. </em> She looked at him like she’d never been made to be angry.</p><p>Aurora was never intimate. She was joyful. She was happy. She was <em> there</em>, but she was never close to Ronan, even if he was her favorite. Niall tells him:</p><p><em> People will love you. But it won’t matter, Ronan</em>, and he says <em> Ronan </em> like he means <em> there’s nothing left of what you choose to hoard so obsessively. </em> He tells him, he says: <em> You may defy me, but you will never forget this. Intimacy is less important than fear. If you are strong, you will never be alone. </em></p><p>Niall’s voice is like fireworks, and fireworks remind Ronan of fire and death and boys living nightmares in white Mitsubishis. His hands shake. The <em> Lynch </em> name crept into every inch of Ronan’s life, even after Niall’s death, even after he tried to rub every inch of his body raw to avoid the lingering, clinging history. </p><p>When Ronan was fifteen, he thought bathrooms were safe from his dreams because they were clean and unlike him and lonely. At sixteen, he thought his bedrooms were safe, only because they were dark and dingy and messy and <em> his</em>. At seventeen, he stopped running. At seventeen, Niall had clung to every inch of Ronan’s skin and made himself a home in his memories. At seventeen, Ronan couldn’t think of any more places to run. At seventeen, the thing Ronan was trying to hide from was him.</p><p>Niall used to say, <em> there’s a certain portrayal of uselessness that comes from being a business man. Your brother portrays that patheticness spectacularly, Ronan.</em> He always said <em> Ronan </em> like he meant to say <em> child of God </em> and that frightens Ronan, now, to this day. Holiness is a clock bouncing on borrowed time for everyone, and Ronan’s always walked the thin line between what’s able to be forgiven.</p><p>Niall was always the kind of man who went to hell.</p><p>His father used to say, he used to smile with a little dimple on his right cheek, he used to say: <em> I’m the kind of man who believes in God, Ronan, and do you know why? </em> He used to laugh, then, and Ronan imagined him saying this when he crawled through Monmouth Manufacturing’s bathroom tiles, the creaking floors under his bedroom, the one dented board of the sidewalk outside. He used to say: <em> Because I want to know how to become Him. Isn’t that what all men want? To become God. </em></p><p>Ronan’s never been further from God than when Niall was around—that’s the sickness of the <em> Lynch </em> family, the sickness that he’s had his fingers drenched in since he first started dreaming. It’s something that he finds repulsive <em> and </em> endearing—he finds himself clawing at the backsplash of the Barns’ kitchen trying to find a semblance of Niall.</p><p>He used to think they had rats, and then, cameras—but everything was an ounce of Niall’s essence that left craters in the house. Ronan isn’t sure if this house was found, built, or dreamt. Still, in the sheds connected to everything, cows lay sleeping. There are deer and wolves in the forest that are sleeping, waiting to be skulls.</p><p>He dreamt of them in his bathroom, once. He dreamt them in the upstairs bathroom in the Barns, right by Declan’s room. He went in to wash his hands, then, feeling his palms dry and sticky. In the sink, a rotting deer skull—behind him, Niall, adorned with the rest of the deer. Ronan closed his eyes and begged not to wake up. Niall grabbed at his face, reaching into his mouth, and asked him:</p><p>“Are you going to be quiet?”</p><p>“That’s a low blow, Ronan.”</p><p>Niall’s word play tricks never really worked as well on Declan as they did on Ronan—it might’ve been due to the neglect, Ronan thinks, or that he’s just immune to <em> Lynch </em> tactics. In the end, it’s difficult for Ronan to unlearn that there’s no real separation between <em> Declan </em> and <em> Lynch</em>. There’s no Lynch <em> but it’s </em> Declan—there is devil and there is charm, and Declan’s just as much as Ronan is.</p><p>“It still didn’t work, though, D.C., so it’s a low blow that fuckin’ <em> missed</em>.” </p><p>Declan’s Nissan purrs when they idle, the seats beneath them rumbling comfortingly. The Lynch BMW grumbles thick and hard and <em> hot </em> compared to Declan’s repaired shitbox—it’s a comfortable thing, if boring, if entirely unremarkable.</p><p>“Whatever,” Declan says, and Ronan sees what he’s looking at—the remarkable naturalness, cemented into reality, West Virginia old gothic Henrietta church in the middle of town. No matter how humid it gets, or how many carpenter bees seem to reproduce in town, it’s stayed the same. It <em> seems </em> dreamt, but it’s never moved, shifted, or slept. Ronan has dreamt slaughter houses and killing floors here—he’s dreamt Gods and corpses and Ronans to be forgotten. “You ever think that this is where everything started?”</p><p>“What, our Catholic guilt? Fucking obviously, are you deranged?” Ronan doesn’t look at it unless it’s a Sunday. Something shrivels and curdles in his gut, despite all of his attempts to be <em> holy. </em></p><p>“I’m—fine, okay, Ronan. It doesn’t matter. Ready to go home?”</p><p>Ronan finds Declan’s hands, and can’t find the difference between <em> Lynch </em> and Lynch, home and not home, dreamt and real. “Yeah, sure. Let’s go home.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you for reading! This fic took me a very long time to end up and finish writing, but it was really fun to write. Overall, a really helpful learning experience. Comments and kudos are appreciated, and if you’d like to continue any conversations about this, my <a href="https://twitter.com/jpsjpsjpsJUPES">Twitter</a> is here!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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